I watched The Today Show the other day, and I found out that Americas top hated sin is (insert drum roll) Adultery! The reporter said that it was considered worse then, in his words, ‘living in sin’, and premarital sex. He seemed surprised, I guess that the others are victimless sins. It was mentioned that anyone committing adultery is seen to wear a proverbial scarlet A, target of gossip, hate, chastisement, on and on. Even though, statistically, America is one of the lowest on average of any other industrialized nation in committing adultery, we hate it the worse out of all the other hedonistic sins.
Aren’t all sins equal? It is hard to lump our sins in with the ‘top ten worse sins’ isn’t it? Homosexuals, liars, thiefs, procrastinators, murderers, gossips, etc. are all equal. There is a fine line in how we deal with others that sin, we don’t want to judge do we? We don’t want to coddle either. I have news for you and myself, we all sin. GASP! It might not be the really big sins, but a sin is a sin is a sin. There are all kind of different schools of thoughts on this: Being born this way; Freudian; Jung; Social norms; etc. We could debate the reason all day long, people have written series of books on the subject. That is not what I am interested in right now, it is how we handle sins and the sinners (all of us).
We seem to be careful not to rebuke sometimes because we feel that we are judging. You can call me an ex-addict because I am, if I was still in that lifestyle I would want you to confront me, someone had to before I could open my eyes, but there is a difference in pointing out my ‘faults’ and condemning me. There is a difference in you talking behind my back and coming to me face to face with concern and love. On the other side of the coin there is a difference between you taking up for me against the world and telling me we all have our sins, and not rebuking me gently with concern and love. It’s a struggle to not give into our temptations whatever they might be, we don’t need to be enabled.
Jesus talked to the woman at the well, no matter what it looked like to others, He wanted her to know about the living water. She tried to let Him know she wasn’t married, He confronted her with her sin, ‘You say well. The man you live with is not your husband.’ He rebuked her not to continue in sin, He didn’t tell her she would not sin again, He didn’t tell her that from now on it will be a cake walk. The same with the woman that was to be stoned. Those who judged surrounded her to stone her, after they left Jesus did not say to her, ‘Can you believe them? Judging you like that. Well, I happen to know that half of them purchase prostitutes on a regular basis, and here they are judging you.’ He was kind to her, but He rebuked her to go and sin no more. Jesus was without sin, and if He wanted to, He could have judged the whole lot of them. In fact the one that could have thrown stones was Jesus, He was truly without sin. Yet He didn’t, He gently rebuked and welcomed.
Here I am going on again with something that everyone knows about. I know that I am not saying anything new, or nothing that you don’t know about. But seeing how the world views sin, wanting to pick and choose which will be accepted and which will not, makes me think that as Christians we need to be a better example. To show that no sin should be accepted, but the sinner should be loved and lifted up, not only because we are all His children, but we need lifted up also. We need a support base, to share our struggles, our misunderstandings, our fears, our prayers to be the children our Father longs for us to be, to be reminded that none of us are perfect, and we all need that shoulder to lean on.
D.
